The Worst Part
by Perceived-nobility
Summary: In which Tony Stark tries to deal with Howard's final message to him. Cross-posted to Tumblr here:


I.

Since he put in the new reactor core, Tony's found it hard to sleep at night. The light of the old reactors never bothered him: he could roll onto his stomach and muffle it or cocoon himself in very, very thick blankets. But the new one grates against the sheets and digs into the back of its housing when he lays on it, and it hums into his bones in the dark and no matter how still he stays it won't _stop_.

Even the nightmares were better than this. The sweat and shaking, the cold, skittering footsteps of fear down his back. And the cramps, the times when he felt his blood on fire, when he could map out every artery and vein in a prickling, burning tracery of pain, as if his body needed to remind him what it was before he lost it.

That's gone now. There's no more palladium in his blood and he's learned if he only sleeps when he's exhausted he can stave off the worst of the nightmares. But some part of him—some young, defiant part—wants it back. Because at least then it was his death. By his hands. With his technology, and even if his father came up with the first arc reactor, Tony's sure he never could have built it out of scraps in a cave.

He has to be sure of that. He doesn't think about what it would mean if he doubted it.

II.

He can't decide which is worse: the debt or the dehumanization. After all this time, it hurts to know that he's no longer alive because of his own mind; he's using a borrowed machine with a borrowed power source, and his only contribution was that of a child, copying Daddy in miniature. Plus, he hates owing his life to the man who, he feels, ruined it.

When Tony really thinks about it—late at night in his workshop, when his loneliness is louder than the music—he realizes that he can't picture himself doing anything else. Being anyone else. But no, it's not some rosy moment of self-absolution when he attains inner peace because he's finally attained his calling in life.

No. He never had the chance to _have_ a calling in life to ignore, to flounder around, majoring in the wrong subject and being unhappy in a terrible job for twenty years before a chance encounter shows him where his passions really are.

No. _Creations_ don't have passions. They don't have aspirations, or dreams, or free will. They have functions, and the whole of their sad, empty existences are spent carrying out those functions. So Tony does the things his father planned for him: building the tech Howard couldn't, adding an extra touch of inventiveness to the genius that Howard laid before him. Not a mind, and certainly not a person. Just Stark 2.0, programmed and powered by Howard and left to mime its way along his legacy.

He'd thought the clean energy angle was his. He'd thought the Iron Man suit was definitely his, conceptualized and designed and given form by his mind and his hands alone.

But Howard had been looking into clean energy sixty years ago and Iron Man ended up on a team with the superhero his father had worked with and under the control of a leader who'd told Tony _to his face_ that he'd known Howard better than Tony had.

III.

For a while, Tony tried to find things he could do for himself.

He drank too much, too late, and too often because he figured that machines didn't try to destroy themselves.

He skipped board meetings and bought too many cars because a) the former were boring and the latter were fun and b) machines made to uphold a legacy didn't fritter it away.

He went to too many parties and slept with too many people for much the same reason.

But he didn't really want to die of alcohol poisoning, so ne never drank _way_ too much and Pepper was too efficient of a secretary/CEO to let him totally ruin the company and the press seemed to love him no matter what—or who—he did.

But this. The way he caresses gently and stares softly into the deep green eyes that stay fixed on him as he maps the light pale body with fingers, lips, and teeth. The soft sounds he makes against that shoulder. The way he is slow, tender, watching every response of the body beneath him because he actually wants to remember this in the morning. The way he wants to say the same things whether or not they're naked. The feel of that name on his tongue, in his throat, in his chest, and the shift of a smile when he says it. The way it fits so nicely next to the word "love".

Because creations don't have aspirations, or dreams, or passions. They don't wait anxiously on doorsteps or reach for embraces; they don't work through the night making something and then swell with pride when it elicits the smallest quirk of a smile. They certainly don't lie pleasantly awake at night, holding someone tight to them and just feeling the warmth of a life being shared.

Tony remembers the first time, when he'd pinned Loki to the bed and growled, and Loki had bitten and scratched and writhed below him, and both of them had only really been in it to hurt themselves. The two of them too little for history and heritage, thinking that if they couldn't change the world at least they could feel what it was to be changed. Nails in his hair and his back, Loki had ground down and growled, "Stark."

And he remembers how he'd slowed, relaxed his fingers on Loki's hips, as he realized that, at least to him, he wanted to be "Tony".


End file.
